France w International SMS options for student
 

France w International SMS options for student

I have a cousin who is on an exchange student program for 10 months or so, in southern France and living with a Host Family. The closest major airport is MontPellier.

At this point this is the current Prepaid service being used.
Bouguyes Telecom
15 euro: 1 month, 40 mins talk time + 200 SMS

Only problem is that my cousin is not able to SEND or RECEIVE international SMS with parents in India (Home country) or me (in United States).

Other options that were mentioned by my cousin: SFR, Orange.

In my discussion with my cousin we determined that International SMS was a must so that we could keep in touch (France < India & USA) easily.

At this point probably provided the SIM / the funds as per the exchange program specs.

I would not mind footing the bill for my cousin to enable International SMS to allow us to keep in touch.

Questions:

- Is there a better option than the current Plan being used to enable International SMS? With the current operator or with another such as Orange or SFR?
- How could I ease the payment of the prepaid cards so that we can do it consistently and easily.. maybe with or without the involvement of the HOST family 'parents'?

- Would it help to add or use one of the following services for my cousin to further improve international communication beyond the International SMS? Ala...Ring and Callback world etc? Any thoughts / ideas?

I'd appreciate your feedback.

That is odd that international SMS is not functioning. It may well be a specific problem to India and USA. Even here in the UK, some networks and MVNO's do not get SMS through to India all of the time.

GPRS data is possible on Bouguyes. If he has a Java enabled phone, he could download a stand alone JAVA application that sends SMS data via a GPRS connection and their own servers. You could try SMSbug for example. (http://www.smsbug.com). You will need to buy some credits with them as well. In any case, this option works out much cheaper than the rate of international SMS with most carriers.

I would say try do this first before other options.

Common Issue
 

I think I know what the problem is, The problem is because in India they use most probably another frequecy, other than GSM , so please make sure that sms sending is only between GSM users, for example GSM to CDMA dosen't work.

Regards,

GSM to CDMA sometimes works (North American GSM providers can text North American CDMA users, and I was able to send a text from O2 UK to SaskTel (Canada) CDMA last month), but it often doesn't work, so it could very well be the problem.

I think the problem is with French networks too... they often have problems with International SMS, also using MobiSMS or SMSbug they often don't arrive. I don't know why, but France often had this problem, not always, but from time to time... And usually changing operator doesn't help much (but maybe Orange should be more reliable). You can try anyway with SMSbug and MobiSMS, they list which networks can receive SMS.

Could you tell us which are the operators used by you in the US and by his parents in India?